


Recovery

by DawningStar



Series: Tron: Renewal [3]
Category: Tron (1982), Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was made for this: to protect, to keep watch.  However much he’s changed, been changed, this duty at least is the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

With every step, Tron retests his guidance and balance subroutines, then looks up to judge his range of vision. The glimmering lines of energy stretch away until they vanish in the distance, with nothing to hide or divert them in the flat and empty plain. It’s larger than the old Grid, Tron estimates, but the vast expanses that had once felt full of promise seem bleak and lifeless now. 

Walking the surface of a clean system doesn’t actually take as much processing as Tron is devoting to the task. There are no dangers here at all, no bugs or glitches in the open memory spaces, and he doesn’t expect to find any threats. Not from outside. 

It doesn’t take much time to make a full circuit when all the system’s inhabitants are clustered around the base of the rebuilt Portal Tower. Even so, the familiar routine of travel-and-scan is strangely comforting, requiring just enough attention that he can stop thinking for a moment about his failures. He was made for this: to protect, to keep watch. However much he’s changed, been changed, this duty at least is the same. 

“Hey, man, come here a minute.”

The voice triggers instant obedience, his feet moving with quick, smooth strides toward Clu—

Tron shakes his head, stumbling to a halt with a sickening wrench, horrified at the path of his own thoughts; not Clu's voice. Never again obedient to Clu.

Flynn glances back with a wide grin, oblivious to Tron’s misstep. “You'll want to see this,” he says, gesturing at the screen just outside the Portal Tower’s wall that is, for the moment, serving as an I/O interface. 

The marks slowly appearing on the surface are in some kind of User code, untranslated, and nothing Tron knows how to read. In the lack of supporting programs, Flynn has been managing I/O functions himself, without regard for the usual protocols. “I don’t understand that syntax, Flynn,” he admits. 

“Oh!” Flynn blinks at the screen, shakes his head slightly. “Of course not, I’m sorry. Here.” He lifts a hand, and with a moment’s concentration adds a filter. “It’s Alan.” 

It’s still not much like the kind of commands Tron is used to hearing from Users outside the system, but the converted message is clear enough. “Flynn,” Alan-One has input, “if this is one of Sam's pranks, I'm going to kill him. If it isn't, I may have to kill you.”

“Kill?” Tron demands, with sharp alarm. If an accepted User decides to terminate and delete a program, there is nothing in Tron's code that will let him intervene.

“Not like that,” Flynn reassures hastily, “Alan's a little upset, but he's mostly joking.”

The word mostly makes this less comforting than it might have been. Tron looks back at the screen, more wary. It still sounds nothing like the commands Alan-One had always given him. 

But Flynn’s response is just below, with the same informality. “Not a joke, Alan. Believe me, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you twenty years ago.” 

“You should be,” Alan-One is now saying, each word long microcycles in appearing. 

Flynn scowls at the slow pace, shrugs ruefully at Tron. “I never really understood, before the whole thing where I couldn’t get out, just how long things take for you guys in here.” 

Tron looks down, not comfortable with the unspoken apology. “Your other world needed you just as much,” he excuses. 

“Yeah,” Flynn sighs, rubbing a hand over his beard, “Sam needed me, too. Found a good way to fail everyone, didn’t I?” He shakes his head, changing the subject before Tron can find a way to protest. “How are the Portal programs? I know Ayci hasn’t—but the others?” 

The makeshift quarantine is smaller now, four of the five initial compartments dissolved away as Yori's sisters recovered themselves. It hadn't taken much encouragement for Lia, Ell, and Emara to break through the fragile camouflage that was all the protection they’d had against Clu.

Still, the holding cell lingers, a dark stain against the glow of the new system.

“Emara says the Tower itself only needs a little work,” Tron reports, though his eyes stay on the prison and not the fitful glow above. “The data backup loaded in well, but it isn't quite compatible with the safety protocols you added more recently.”

Flynn nods absently. “They seem okay to you, though?”

“They’re not a danger,” Tron answers at once, burying a flicker of offense. Did Flynn think he would fail to make certain of that before opening the quarantine? 

But waving that away, Flynn clarifies, “I have some idea how bad things were for you. I’m wondering how many lifetimes it’s going to take me to apologize to them.” 

Gray-haired, acerbic Emara hadn’t yet lost the fierce air of vengeance satisfied, while Ell clung to her sisters as though they might vanish if she looked away. Lia had never quite managed to meet Tron’s gaze, her face blank and hollow; he wasn’t surprised. 

And Ayci, sunny little Ayci, hasn’t responded to Yori even after a long millicycle of patient effort. 

It wasn’t Flynn’s fault. “Do you remember Kimry?” Tron asks. 

The puzzled frown is answer enough. And why should the Creator remember one preloaded driver program out of thousands? “He was a cargo pilot,” Tron says. “On the Portal run. He used to bring Lia the latest energy-use theories, take her to the city when she had time, change his schedule to stay at the Portal when she didn’t.” 

Tron has been trying to remember everything that he—that Rinzler—had done to Yori’s sisters, in the faint hope that the knowledge might bring some idea how to help. And then trying, with much less success, to stop remembering. 

Once Yori recognizes what Rinzler did to those she loves, and not to her alone, will she be as willing to forgive? 

Flynn is still waiting, more patient than he used to be. Tron looks at his own hands, flexing them to erase the feedback tingle of holding two disks. “I derezzed him.” 

A soft hiss of comprehension, and Flynn’s hand on his shoulder, undeserved comfort. 

Kimry’s function was easily duplicated and the program himself scarcely mattered, not to the Grid or the Users—certainly not to Clu, except as an annoyance. But he mattered to Lia. All of them, the faces twisted in terror or fury or defiance, they had mattered just as much to someone. 

Users forget, as Flynn says, and even in the good times the Creator had only ever spent one millicycle out of fifty within the Grid. But Tron was the Grid’s security for hundreds of cycles, before Clu’s takeover. If he hadn’t known quite every program by name, he’d certainly tried. 

Rinzler hadn’t known any of them, but Tron’s memory is horrifyingly clear now, filled with evidence to condemn. When he remembers the programs Rinzler murdered he sees the faces he had promised to protect, Iso and Basic alike: Havelith, who loved to dance and had probably never held an active weapon before, finally run to exhaustion; Renni the artist, gentle and quiet, triggering her own derez before she spoke a word about the resistance; cantankerous Jens, braver than anyone would have guessed, throwing himself and a lightcycle at the Black Guard in defense of the Isos who lived next door and about whom he had submitted regular complaints to Tron since they moved in. 

Too many, too many, always more—the memories will drown him, and he cannot fight them. 

Of his victims, Kimry may be the most fortunate. There is still someone to mourn the pilot besides the program who derezzed him. 

Tron finds Lia’s anger a peculiar relief. Flynn’s forgiveness came too easily, a function of distance and the User's own perceived guilt. Yori’s acceptance, though he will treasure it as long as it lasts, derives from her love and long despair. But Lia knows that what Rinzler did is beyond excuse. 

Flynn mutters one of his inexplicable User curses, and says, “I wish I could fix things, Tron, I really, really do.” 

“You are,” Tron assures him, because what is this new creation if not fixing what was broken? The fact that some things, some programs, can’t be repaired even by Users—that isn’t Flynn’s fault either. “We all know...” He gropes for the words, which prove elusive. “We’re grateful for what you’re trying to do.” It isn’t quite what he wants to say. He doesn’t even know what he wants to say. Anything that would give back a measure of the joy that used to light the User’s face. 

But Flynn looks away, shadows in his eyes, and bends over the screen again. It’s lost the filter, so Tron has no idea what he’s telling Alan-One. If Flynn wants him to know, there will be time later for it. 

For now, Tron has been away from Yori and her struggle to reach Ayci for too long. He’d given Yori the proper privilege level to get out of the quarantine cell without help, but he knows she will not want to leave Ayci there alone even for a microcycle.

From the outside, the cell walls are a translucent shadow, not the unrelieved black surface that hid all system information from a prisoner. Tron can see glints of the pure blue of Yori's circuits close alongside the burning orange that marks Ayci, both programs sitting against the farther wall.

Not for the first time, he quells the instinct to pull Yori away. None of the Portal programs have yet shown any tendency to attack while loyal to Clu. Apparently they were too specialized, too unique, for Clu to bother with battle routines that would never be used. 

The quarantine wall gives way to him as though it were no more substantial than the shadow it resembles. Yori looks up, her face drawn with the long effort and her eyes full of grief. Ayci doesn't move, pale blonde head bent over folded arms, eyes open and unblinking in a gaze at nothing anyone else can see. They resemble each other strongly, though Ayci’s hair is cropped to short golden fluff, and she is even smaller than Yori. 

That has always been true. But Ayci should never be this silent. 

Little Ayci is the oldest and most incomprehensible of the Portal programs, unchanged since long before Tron’s code was first compiled. She is the core of the digitization process, the conversion algorithm without which none of her sisters could ever bring a User through the Portal, however necessary each one is to the User’s safety. And Ayci, devoted and laughing and freely affectionate, has always been dearly beloved of her younger sisters, however strange other programs might find her. 

Yori whispers something inaudible to her sister, then climbs wearily to her feet and moves toward Tron. She reaches out to take his wrist, fitting under his arm as though the cycles of separation had never been, but a faint tremor in her touch gives away her hesitation. She is, Tron suspects, proving to herself that the memories of terror do not control her. 

Long-trained instinct still growls beneath thought that he shouldn't be allowing a potential threat so close, and just atop it, layers of guilt and fear insist that he is the threat. Yori shouldn't touch him, shouldn't want to touch him. 

But Yori seems to feel differently, and he can see no way to keep his distance without hurting her. Rinzler had done more than enough of that already. 

“She won’t speak,” Yori murmurs, words half-buried in his shoulder. “All of us have tried. If I give a direct order as Portal Supervisor, she responds to me just like she has for cycles. But Ayci—I can’t even tell if she hears me, Tron.” A shudder of breath, and she pulls away enough to turn a pleading look on him. “I can’t bear to leave her in the dark, not after everything. You said yourself you didn’t think she was a danger.” 

If Yori asks for Ayci’s freedom, Tron doesn’t think he can deny her, and he doubts Flynn would either. “I said she probably isn’t a danger to you,” he points out nevertheless. The new system is fragile, open to be shaped, and Ayci still wears Clu’s influence in every circuit. 

Tron remembers when it happened, remembers Clu’s high spirits on the journey to the Portal. Rinzler had followed silently, with Yori beside him repaired and terribly obedient in an orange that did not suit her. 

Clu had used Rinzler as a tool to break Yori, and likewise used Yori against her sisters. Hopeless rage in Lia’s eyes and Emara’s clenched hands, despair multiplying the lines in Ell’s face...when Yori asked they had one by one unlocked their identity disks to Clu’s touch. Rinzler had watched without particular interest. No threat in the noncombatant programs to draw his attention. Little Ayci had been the last, silent tears streaking her cheeks with a glitter of lost energy. 

He’d—Rinzler had thought how foolish she was to weep, when Clu offered the Portal programs a place in his great design. 

Now Tron holds Yori close, and wishes desperately that the terrors that haunt them all could be hunted down like gridbugs, that there were something he could fight. How can he protect this system from the shadows that linger within himself? There are few things Tron hates more than feeling helpless. 

“I’ve got to talk to Flynn,” Yori says at last, her voice woven of determination and despair. She shouldn’t sound like that, not now, not ever again. 

Huddled against the wall, Ayci shows no sign of having heard, no flicker of eye or expression. Yori bends to take a limp hand and rubs the unresisting fingers briskly. “I’ll be right back,” she promises, leaning down in an awkward half-embrace. When she looks up at Tron, pain draws her face tight. “Will you stay with her? Just for a few microcycles?” 

There is no possible way that Tron could refuse her that. He nods. 

“Ayci always hated being alone,” Yori mutters into Ayci’s pale hair, holding her sister a moment more. Then she slips past and is gone, invisible once the quarantine wall claims her. 

The orange-lit program reacts neither to Yori’s absence nor to Tron’s presence. He closes his eyes for a moment, slipping by habit into a light scan of the other. 

His scan subroutine reports nothing wrong, which Tron cannot find reassuring. Loyalty to Clu is visible in her every circuit, and nothing is wrong? No. The faults are buried deeper than his scan can sense, or else he is himself still tainted. 

But Flynn has told him he is clean. 

Tron considers the past, and whether he might make use of that former identity here. Something to which Ayci would respond by training and function, as Yori had, even under Clu’s influence. It won’t bring Ayci any closer to recovery, but if it gives Yori any help in finding her sister’s malfunction... 

If he processes the notion more, fear will paralyze him. 

“Portal status?” A clipped query. Rinzler’s tone. Will he ever be able to give orders again without invoking Rinzler? 

But it gets a response, if no pleasant one; Ayci springs to her feet as though the floor is toxic, sheer terror flooding her eyes. “Conversion standing by, sir!” The words are clear and cold, an automatic, predefined report that is completely unlike Yori’s chattering smallest sister. 

He flinches away from that look, too much like all the ones that came before. Ayci doesn’t notice that, either, standing frozen at attention. Tron half-extends a hand to comfort her, sees his own armor and stops. There’s nothing he can say that Ayci will heed, if Yori’s already tried. 

“Summarize recent activity,” Tron says, far more gently. “Please.” He can’t hear Rinzler’s voice again like that. 

It doesn’t seem to matter to Ayci. “Program designate Flynn-Two,” she begins, “predefined User code, successful conversion and exit. Program designate unknown, Iso variances, accompanying master key with predefined User code, complications due to code mismatch, analysis override, successful conversion and exit.” 

Sam Flynn and Quorra. Nothing unexpected there. Nothing helpful, either. 

Their exit and Sam’s entry are the only Portal uses in a thousand cycles, Tron knows. But Ayci goes right on summarizing. 

“Program designate Sentry-one-three-five-two-nine-zero-five. No User code defined. Unsuccessful conversion. Partial code recovery. Rectification performed. Program functional.” 

Tron stares at her. 

“Program designate Sentry-one-three-five-two-nine-zero-four. No User code defined. Unsuccessful conversion. No code recovery possible. Program derezzed.” 

The only successful uses. Not the only attempts, not with Clu’s ambitions. 

“Program designate Sentry-one-three-five-two-nine-zero-three. No User code defined. Unsuccessful conversion. Partial code recovery. Rectification performed. Program functional.” 

The Portal had never been Rinzler’s concern, unless Clu gave specific orders. But he should have known this. Had known, if he’d spared a nanocycle’s calculation for it. Clu had never given up on getting out, even without Flynn’s disk. Or at least he’d never let the Portal programs stop trying, among their other duties over hundreds of cycles. Matters of rectification and reprogramming, how to bring an army through the Portal intact and loyal. Rinzler had overheard reports, but Tron...

“Program designate Sentry-one-three-five-two-nine-zero-two. No User code defined. Unsuccessful conversion. Partial code recovery. Rectification performed. Program functional.” 

...Tron hadn’t wanted to think about the process. 

Repeating a full rectification was reserved for programs with code mangled past repair, nearly beyond recognition. If anything of personality had survived or recovered after the first wipe it did not last through a second. 

“Program designate—” 

“That’s enough,” Tron cuts off the summary, throat aching. This isn’t anything Yori doesn’t know, hadn’t gone through herself. However much he hates the thought. But there must be something he can say. 

Yori and Ayci and their gentle sisters. Dealing in rectification, reprogramming, and derez, their directives twisted as badly as his own. The only wonder is that most of them seem close to sane. His fault that Clu ever had the chance to hurt them. 

He doesn’t know how to help Ayci, if it’s even possible. He doesn’t know if he has any right to try. 

(Mirrik, Fanix, Neya, so many others, pleading for mercy that never came.) 

Tron closes his eyes. “Ayci,” he whispers. “Tell me about Sentry-one-three-five-two-nine-zero-five. Who was he?” 

Her indrawn breath is a harsh hiss, almost a sob. It’s a long silence before Ayci makes another sound, and then it’s a small, shuddering word, for all its pain infinitely more like Ayci than anything else she’s said. “She.” 

Another long hesitation. Tron doesn’t break it, doesn’t risk frightening that flicker back into hiding. 

The strained emotionless tone is back, though, when Ayci speaks again. “Evidence of chosen feminine render in code. Sir. Previously rectified, personality wipe complete. Residual memories locked.” 

“It’s all right, Ayci,” he murmurs, opening his eyes to look at her sadly. Even if she won’t hear it he can’t fail to assure her. “You and your sisters are free now.” 

However else Ayci takes that, she interprets it as permission to stop answering. Stillness falls across the quarantine. 

Tron sighs, after a time, and bends his head. “I shouldn’t have scared you. I’m sorry.” It has given him some answers, but none that he wanted or that would be any help to Yori. Unlike him, Yori has paid attention to her sisters all those long cycles. She’ll probably be furious that his interference frightened Ayci. With every reason, especially if he’s made things worse. 

The small Portal program doesn’t look up. She folds into her corner with precision, sliding down the quarantine wall, head bent over her knees. In the old days, faced with this kind of blank misery from someone Yori loved so much, Tron would have asked if he could hug her. He’s quite sure that’s a terrible idea right now. 

“Don’t worry,” he says after a moment. “Yori will be back soon.” 

Until then, perhaps he had better just keep still and not scare her anymore. Tron leans against the wall himself, turning enough that he hopes she won’t feel as though Rinzler is watching her. 

“...Portal status: Conversion is functional.” 

The faint whisper stops Tron as cold as a total freeze. He waits, unwilling to speak in case it breaks her effort. 

She still isn’t looking up, but her voice is a scant percentage more like herself. Less like the kind of stiff report that was surely the result of Clu’s programming to control her, make her understandable, force her obedience. 

Clu would never have tolerated Ayci’s spirit, any more than he’d appreciated Yori’s, or Tron’s own. 

It’s a very long time before Tron can pick out another soft word. “...Sir...tell her, stop asking. The program she wants is like the second orange.” 

Tron blinks, trying not to frown in case Ayci looks up at the wrong moment. It’s far closer to the kind of thing Ayci _would_ have said, which has to be a good thing. But there are reasons no one except Ayci’s sisters has ever been up to the task of interpreting her. Ayci’s code had always been so specialized for the task of finding probable and improbable likenesses for conversion that even when she tried to make herself understood, most of it had come out as impenetrable analogy and confusing simile. 

Clu would have had no patience with that at all. 

This comparison, though, as Tron tries to remember...perhaps he understands. In the early days of the laser project, more than one test orange had ended up as a broken, empty shell. So much missing and wrong that the Users discarded it. 

Analogy or not, it’s a clear enough statement to make him wince for Ayci. Too familiar a feeling. 

The Portal is vital to the system. To Flynn, even if Flynn can’t use it himself now. Without it the Users outside will never be able to see their friend. Sam Flynn won’t be able to see his father. He can tell already that Flynn won’t cope well with only the distance of normal input. Not long-term. 

He wonders if it’s his duty to let Ayci out; to guard her, but allow the Portal use to proceed. It would fit what Yori had asked. 

Sending Ayci back to her task this silent, obedient echo of the program she ought to be is wrong. Tron wants to blurt out something ill-thought and unauthorized. He cannot set the User’s priority list, can make no promises. 

If Flynn asks Ayci to continue the blind obedience that Clu has demanded of her all this time, Tron will have words regardless and he suspects they will not be polite. Even if she is correct and this is the only way she can function now, can ever function, it is wrong. 

He doesn’t need more evidence to guess how the guilt has fractured at Ayci all these cycles. She is written to do one job only, to run conversion for the Portal. Every attempt, every derezzed program, had to feel like her personal failure. 

Not that it is, or could be, Ayci’s fault that Clu forced her into murdering programs she’d only ever wanted to protect— 

Tron has to lock his spine against a moment of swaying vertigo, certainties coming unsettled all at once. Too close a parallel to dismiss. 

He failed to protect the Grid. That will never change. But...perhaps some of Rinzler’s memories are not his to claim all fault, either. He can’t blame Yori and her sisters for anything they did under threat and Clu’s coded insistence. If he keeps clinging to his own crimes, how will Yori or Ayci believe he forgives the things they were forced to do? 

The connection leaves him too shaken to process any farther right now. Later. When he is not in front of terrified little Ayci. 

He can’t leave her alone even to seek advice; any number of things may have come up to delay Yori. But Tron has no idea what kind of answer will help Ayci. If there’s anything at all he can ever say that might. 

“You are much more important than the orange,” he tells her, at last. It sounds simplistic and unconvincing even to him. Ayci doesn’t react. He didn’t really think she would. 

A warm blue-lit shape ducks through the quarantine wall and at once wraps an arm around Tron’s waist. Tron tries to hide a guilty flinch. He definitely should have cleared things with Yori before making that kind of attempt to get through to Ayci, and considering what Ayci said he doesn’t know if the very brief spark of familiarity is a good sign or not. Telling Yori about it is going to hurt. 

He reaches to cradle Yori close anyway. Every touch is a new shock that she’s willing to give him any affection at all, and far too precious to turn away. 

Taller than Yori, dark-haired, and prickling with palpable hostility, Lia enters the quarantine next. Her single backward glance is sharp with suspicion, aimed in Tron’s direction though not quite lifting to meet his eyes. Her hands on Ayci’s golden hair and hunched shoulder are infinitely more gentle. 

“Come on,” Yori murmurs in his ear, with a gentle tug. There’s an energy under the words he doesn’t understand, but he nods and follows her lead. No need to have this conversation in front of Ayci. Or Lia, who already hates him enough. 

Out loud and with a firm assurance, Yori adds, “I’ll be back soon, Ayci.” No reaction at all from their oldest sister. Lia smiles a faint, worried acknowledgement in spite of the tension in her posture. It’s a relief to see his presence isn’t costing Yori too badly there. 

Yori shoves them both through the shadowy tickle of the quarantine wall. The sudden light makes Tron blink. More surprising is the gray and white shape of Flynn, just beside the cell and nowhere near the system’s input/output links. 

The User shrugs at his questioning glance, expression slightly abashed. “Alan told me not to interrupt him again. I figure maybe I’d better wait and read what he’s trying to say all at once. Besides, this is important too.” 

“We’re going to take down the quarantine,” Yori declares. No surprise. Tron looks to Flynn again, gets the expected confirming nod. 

He still has to ask, “Are you sure?” As much as he hopes that Ayci will recover given enough time and freedom, she’s a risk to the overall security of the system. Tron can’t fail to warn Flynn of that. “It’s hard to be certain how she’ll act when she still believes she has to be loyal to Clu.” 

Flynn winces at the name. “I’m sure. Yori thinks Ayci will have a better chance with her sisters, and I don’t want to leave her quarantined any more than you do.” 

All of which sounds good, but Tron tries to put his misgivings into a report clear enough to make Flynn understand. “You can’t ask—she shouldn’t—if you’re doing this to make the Portal work, I’m not sure it’s the right choice for Ayci.” Even if he doesn’t have a better option to provide. 

A weary sigh. “Yori’s already been very clear that the most efficient way to make the Portal work is getting a fresh copy of the software to install new.” Flynn glances between the two programs with pained eyes. “I know it had to feel otherwise, but I don’t think of any of you as disposable, Tron. Or replaceable.” 

Tron looks away. Guilt and the long frustrations of the cycles before Clu’s coup clash too painfully for words. It’s Yori who lifts her chin and says, quiet and deadly firm, “I will remind you of that when your priorities change.” 

No argument comes from Flynn, though his foot scuffs the smooth surface audibly. After a moment he goes on, tone subdued. “Whatever’s best for Ayci. That’s my priority right now.” 

Yori smiles up at Tron, hope in her eyes. “Flynn has agreed to encourage Ayci’s use of a Portal override and shutdown.” Her quick glance at Flynn betrays a misgiving that he might yet think better of the plan. “If she thinks anything is about to go wrong, we will put everything back and try again.” 

Even if Flynn permits it Tron is not certain that is at all safe. Ayci is less than reliable right now. 

But if the conversion program has authority to _stop_ the entire process, override even the Users, then...perhaps, in time, Ayci might feel safe with her own function again. That’s worth immeasurable effort to Tron, and to her sisters. 

Perhaps Flynn is right to count this attempt worth the cost. No wonder Yori doubts his ability to commit to the plan. Programs are supposed to perform their tasks every time the Users request it, if they possibly can. 

Since Alan-One and Flynn seem willing to forgive all his own failures, he is more relieved than he can say that little Ayci will receive a similar measure of understanding from them. None of this was ever her fault. 

“It might work,” he agrees aloud, and tightens his grip on Yori beside him just a little in encouragement. 

Flynn nods at them both, relief visible in the set of his face even under his beard. He steps toward the main nexus point of the temporary structure. 

Within the quarantine’s dim wall, Lia whispers soft reassurance into Ayci’s feathery hair. Yori watches them both. “I’m glad you made her speak to you,” she adds under her breath, squeezing Tron’s hand. 

He stiffens. She goes on, “We had come to watch her...I thought I might know what to do, but I couldn’t confirm what was going on when she wouldn’t say anything at all.” 

Tron shakes his head. “I’m sorry I frightened her.” 

“Ayci hasn’t stopped being terrified since she woke up, we can all see it.” Yori sighs. “I kept my core separate from Clu’s code. We’d expected him to try what he did or something like it, and tried to be prepared. Most of us managed to hide enough, but Ayci’s always been a unique case...she couldn’t function divided into pieces. She had to do her job. I think she accepted the overlay as truth. And now she is afraid because Clu has to be right, or they were all for nothing, all the programs she tried to push through the Portal, all the death.” 

So many programs falling to voxels at his disk for the glory of Clu, for the sake of the world Clu wanted. Tron doesn’t answer. 

Yori tucks her head against him anyway and continues. “She can’t listen yet, but I think...if she doesn’t have to kill anyone else, if she knows she is safe and no one is forcing her to make the Portal work, recognizes that her function is not murder anymore...I hope she can heal.” 

Attempting to process the parallels threatens to make Tron stall completely, and he stops trying. Ayci deserves all the help she can get. He doesn’t mind watching over her in case she is after all a threat, and he trusts Yori to guard the well-being of anyone who needs to use the Portal. “We’ll give her as much time as she needs.” 

This is the sort of promise that they really must hold Flynn to keeping. Tron won’t undermine Yori in that effort, should it become necessary. 

“Thank you,” she tells him after a moment, a softness in her voice. 

When Flynn takes down the quarantine it shreds to pieces at his touch. Lia looks up with something almost a smile, and it doesn’t even fade entirely when her gaze shifts past Tron. 

Yori squeezes his hand. “I need to help Ayci get settled at the Portal. Do you want me to find you later?” 

“Always,” Tron answers by reflex. Yori tilts her head up to leave a swift kiss on his cheek, and it brings him a mild flush of embarrassment that could have come directly from Encom. 

At least not everything between them has changed, he supposes. 

Flynn kneels to speak gently to Ayci, which is wise of him because Lia would definitely smack him if he said anything wrong. Tron backs off, not wanting to frighten her again. His scanning process doesn’t need to be that close to watch for threats. 

He can’t tell how Ayci reacts to the suggestion, but none of them expected her to greet it as an instant cure. She won’t stand, but Lia and Yori between them manage to carry her small form up toward the Portal. Tron resists offering to help. Lia doesn’t need another excuse to shout at him. 

The system still has so very little of the Grid, and so much already to grieve. But the quarantine is gone. All Yori’s sisters are together. Flynn is trying hard to live up to his promises. 

Tron feels a faint twinge of hope that they all might heal. Their home might be more than a barely functional mess. In time, with the support of their Users, it seems possible. 

He wants Flynn to be proud of his system again. He wants Yori to be happy here. 

Kimry would want to know Lia survived everything Clu threw at her. He would never want grief to destroy her. Tron won’t let anything get in the way of their new system’s best interests, he decides in sudden determination. Not even his own guilt. 

When he sets out to patrol the small inhabited area again, the memories of the dead seem to balance a little easier with his focus to defend the living. 

If Alan-One comes, Tron dares to hope he might not after all be entirely disappointed in his program.


End file.
